Energy Department Funds Projects to Accelerate Tech Development

The Department of Energy has allocated $73 million in funding for 11 projects to accelerate the development of new technologies for future industries.

As part of the funding, awardees will engage in basic research for the discovery, creation and production of materials and technologies that can be scaled and transitioned into new products and capabilities that can support economic growth and national security. 

Some of the projects receiving funding are a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study on the role of microbes in biomanufacturing processes, the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s materials development for next-generation semiconductors and Argonne National Laboratory’s efforts to integrate emerging technologies for medical applications.

The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the  Accelerate Innovations in Emerging Technologies program announcement, DOE said.

The Energy Department has been providing funding for various projects in recent months.

Earlier in September, the department released $29 million in funding for fusion and plasma energy research. Seven teams comprising 19 institutions will use the grants to research artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies and techniques that can improve fusion and plasma sciences.

In July, the department awarded six quantum computing projects $11.7 million to study the limitations of intermediate-scale quantum processors.